FPTP or AV?

[Mathew]

Not sure whether this could be considered a debate or not, but I'm interested to know what the general opinion is on Habbox.

First Past The Post or the Alternative Vote - and why?
Matt

[Charlottay!]

personally prefer first past the post then they clearly deserve to have won the election. if it is Alternate then you could win just because the person who came last rather likes a certain candidate second.

[Johno]

personally prefer first past the post then they clearly deserve to have won the election. if it is Alternate then you could win just because the person who came last rather likes a certain candidate second.

I disagree that they clearly deserve to win, for example:
If A gets 4 votes, B gets 2 votes, C gets 2 votes and D gets 2 votes - A is the winner in FPTP but that's 6 people who don't want A to be in power.

I feel that AV is not exactly perfect but it works better and is more representative than FPTP.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3ahU0gsy-0

[FlyingJesus]

In AV it's possible (although not likely by any means) to have someone elected who NO-ONE had chosen as their first choice. That scenario aside, a more proportionate merely means more likelihood of a hung parliament and slower decision-making

[Hecktix]

AV is more representative but I wouldn't call it fairer, as a party who could come third or fourth on first preference votes (FPTP) could win on second, third, fourth + preference votes. I don't personally think it's fair, as the party with the most first-choice votes should win.

To be fair (and someone's gonna start going on at me about election turn outs being higher for AV but oh well), no election is representative of the public anyway so there's no point in wasting millions reforming it. You fight for a win in an election, you either win or you lose if you lose you accept the other party got more votes and move on with it. Also you have to judge how serious people are about their second, third choices etc - for instance on my ballot paper in 2010 I had five options, Labour, Conservative, Lib Dem, UKIP and BNP, if I was asked to rank these in order it would be Labour, Lib Dem, Conservative, UKIP, BNP - however just because I put Lib Dems second, doesn't mean I want them in power and I wouldn't want to think that my vote contributed to the Lib Dems getting into power, under AV you have to put them in order of preference or not vote - I think this is unfair.

In these times with our economy how it is, we don't need to be wasting so much money on changing an electoral system, especially one that'll cost more and more every election

[GommeInc]

Under AV you have to put them in order of preference or not vote - I think this is unfair.

I read somewhere that you can vote for 1 if you want to, you do not have to vote for other parties under the AV system. Did I misread that, because I wouldn't be surprised?

I'm not sure what to think. Technically FPTP is fairer as the person with the most votes clearly deserves that place, but AV allows for greater power as it gives a vote a value of 1 to 5, where before there was no power to the vote, a vote was just a vote.

[Mathew]

I read somewhere that you can vote for 1 if you want to, you do not have to vote for other parties under the AV system. Did I misread that, because I wouldn't be surprised?

Yeah this is correct. You can just choose one option and be done with it. I read the little booklet that got sent through the mail about it, explaining the difference between the two, etc.

+ yeah I pretty much agree with the above posts. There's no point spending stupid amounts of money on reforming it when the current system is good enough (and has been for goodness knows how long). AV may help to bring a lot of the smaller parties to the public's attention, or perhaps it's just Labour's cry for help in regaining their power. We'll see.

[GommeInc]

+ yeah I pretty much agree with the above posts. There's no point spending stupid amounts of money on reforming it when the current system is good enough (and has been for goodness knows how long). AV may help to bring a lot of the smaller parties to the public's attention, or perhaps it's just Labour's cry for help in regaining their power. We'll see.

I tend to find the Lib Dems are the ones pushing for the vote. The leaftlet I got was a complete joke, from the Lib Dems saying how "although they lied, we can at least keep this promise" which makes no blooming sense at all.

[Hecktix]

Yeah this is correct. You can just choose one option and be done with it. I read the little booklet that got sent through the mail about it, explaining the difference between the two, etc.

+ yeah I pretty much agree with the above posts. There's no point spending stupid amounts of money on reforming it when the current system is good enough (and has been for goodness knows how long). AV may help to bring a lot of the smaller parties to the public's attention, or perhaps it's just Labour's cry for help in regaining their power. We'll see.

The majority of the Labour Party disagree with AV, it's just Miliband (basically) that supports it and his argument is it represents the people, which is him portaying his message, to be fair Matt, no matter what system is in place Labour & Conservative will always be the two main parties, I don't think Labour need to "cry for help in regaining power" as the coalition are basically handing votes to Labour day by day. It's the Lib Dems who want it more than any other party and let's face it, you could definitely say they are crying for power and would do anything for it.

[Mathew]

I tend to find the Lib Dems are the ones pushing for the vote. The leaftlet I got was a complete joke, from the Lib Dems saying how "although they lied, we can at least keep this promise" which makes no blooming sense at all.

lol is that what they've said?.. bless them

The majority of the Labour Party disagree with AV, it's just Miliband (basically) that supports it and his argument is it represents the people, which is him portaying his message, to be fair Matt, no matter what system is in place Labour & Conservative will always be the two main parties, I don't think Labour need to "cry for help in regaining power" as the coalition are basically handing votes to Labour day by day. It's the Lib Dems who want it more than any other party and let's face it, you could definitely say they are crying for power and would do anything for it.

Indeed, it's such a shame that people don't realise the benefits from the coalition The only reason they're handing them votes is because people are too brainwashed to realise it's for the greater good. If only those people would come out of the cotton-wool ball of a Labour government :rolleyes:

Good point on the Lib Dems though. I can't help but feel slightly sorry for Nick Clegg and the amount of bad press he's getting; but then again, I think I would have done the exact same thing as him. For the pay packet, obviously